But thou to sorrow settest no limit.AdmetusAh! ah!Chorus’Tis hard to bear, but still—AdmetusWoe is me!ChorusThou art not the first to lose—AdmetusO! woe is me!ChorusA wife; misfortune takes a different shape for every man she plagues. AdmetusO the weary sorrow! O the grief for dear ones dead and gone! Why didst thou hinder me from plung-ing into the gaping grave, there to lay me down and die with her, my peerless bride? Then would Hades for that one have gotten these two faithful souls at once, crossing the nether lake together.
ChorusI had a kinsman once, within whose home died his only son, worthy of a father’s tears; yet in spite of that he bore his grief resignedly, childless though he was, his hair already turning grey, himself far on in years, upon life’s downward track.
AdmetusO house of mine, how can I enter thee? how can I live here, now that fortune turns against me? Ah me! How wide the gulf ’twixt then and now! Then with torches cut from Pelion’s pines, with marriage hymns I entered in, holding my dear wife’s hand; and at our back a crowd of friends with cheerful cries, singing the happy lot of my dead wife and me, calling us a noble pair made one, children both of highborn lineage; but now the voice of woe instead of wedding hymns, and robes of black instead of snowy white usher me into my house to my deserted couch.
ChorusHard upon prosperous fortune came this sorrow to thee, a stranger to adversity; yet hast thou saved thy soul alive. Thy wife is dead and gone; her love she leaves with thee. What new thing is here? Death ere now from many a man hath torn a wife.AdmetusMy friends, I count my dead wife’s lot more blest than mine, for all it seems not so; for nevermore can sorrow touch her for ever; all her toil is over, and glorious is her fame. While I, who had no right to live, have passed the bounds of fate only to live a life of misery; I know it now. For how shall I endure to enter this my house? Whom shall I address, by whom be answered back, to findNauck brackets this line as spurious. aught joyful in my entering in? Whither shall I turn? Within, the desolation will drive me forth,